Principles of Discipline

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

And some of you are already going, oh great, an entire talk on discipline. And this is related to principles of discipline. Some of you are already wondering, is this personal discipline? Is this me spanking my kid? Is this the Lord spanking me? And that’s the thing about principles is the answer to that is yes. It is supposed to be related to principles that will transcend all those particulars and like a lot of good things, personal discipline is something that we wish we had without having to do the work to acquire it. We want the fruit but we don’t want the growth that produces the fruit. I mean, it is like a lot of things.

Really, we want the outcome that is without the process to get to that outcome. I would like to have read a lot of really good books, Which is unfortunately not quite the same thing as actually having read them or doing the work I’d like to have financial security without having to make any sacrifices or do the work to get there I’d like to be able to play the piano like a concert pianist without sacrificing years of my life to get there I’d like to be healthy and fit But I don’t want the unpleasant and hard repetitions of exercise to get me there And I don’t like eating only half as much dessert as I actually want I May want to be fresh and alert in the morning to get up and do my work But I don’t want to go to bed on time when there are so many fun movies to watch and so many fun conversations to have.

In other words, I’d like to be a person of discipline, but without the unpleasant process to get there. And I have a sense that I’m not alone. The difference between discipline and the other process I spoke of, though, discipline particularly, is that discipline itself, we know, is a gift from God. It is an evidence of His love for us. Reading good books, saving money, strenuous exercise, getting good sleep, and all the rest of those things that I mentioned might be examples of disciplined behavior. But discipline is a gift from the Lord. It is a gracious gift from the Lord to help us become who we are becoming, who He wants us to be.

And if we do what we are supposed to do, we are blessed for it. And according to Proverbs, that blessing includes all sorts of good things. Life direction, chapter 6.23, chapter 10.17, oftentimes monetary wealth, chapter 6.6-8, chapter 10 verse 11, long life, chapter 10 verse 27, and plenty more, which I’d like to take a look at with our time together tonight. So in the interest of defining some terms, let me offer for some working definitions quite simply. And though the principles here apply to all of humanity in general, God disciplines those whom He loves. Chapter three, verse 11. So for our purposes, I’ll be talking about the discipline that comes from God to His people.

And this is discipline for Christians of both wise and foolish varieties. And yes, even among Christians, they’re both. So discipline is training. And a person who exercises personal discipline, or self-discipline, is what we would call a disciplined person. And that disciplined person evidences that, in whatever capacity that he has disciplined, he has been trained, ultimately by God, sometimes by self, sometimes by his parents. But the degree to which you are disciplined in an area is the degree to which you have been trained in that area. Now, for some people, that training comes hard, particularly for the foolish and stubborn.

And for some people, the training comes easier. And sometimes those people just make it look easy. And you may be tempted to think, well, that’s just a disciplined person. He’s wired that way. Maybe, or maybe in that particular area of discipline, he is wiser. He is more teachable. He is more given to response. He is more given to instruction, to heating the instruction of those who care about him. So being disciplined is a little like being wise in this. A wise person, say like Solomon, is not necessarily wise in every context or every way.

Solomon was the wisest man to have lived at the time when he was alive, and yet when it came to the ways of romance, we know that he was not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. And that has been a stumbling block for Christians for generations. How can we say that Solomon is wise when he had so many wives and concubines? Well, one thing we know about wisdom is that just because a person is wise in one area does not mean, and he may even be categorized as a wise person, and yet it doesn’t mean he has nothing more to learn. Likewise, that’s the same way with discipline. You may find, and many of you may have known, somebody who was very disciplined, extremely disciplined in diet, in sleep, in exercise, and was actually quite lazy or stubborn or foolish when it came to relationships or money or work. So just because a man may be disciplined in one way doesn’t mean that He doesn’t have room to grow in others.

The point is this. All discipline is from the Lord. Whether it’s from your parents, or from your boss, or from yourself, as you’re giving yourself a kick in the hind parts to get out of bed in the morning, it is from the Lord. And it is a gift. And for some, that gift leads to repentance in life. For others, it does not. It depends on how we receive the gift. It’s that sum of what we can control. is on the full wise spectrum somewhere. You have foolish, you have wise, and you have everyone. And nobody has yet arrived where he will be eventually. Fools don’t learn easily, the wise do, and all are subject from discipline of the Lord because he loves us.

But disciplined persons, so those who have been trained in whatever capacity, are necessarily self-disciplined. That means that the discipline is imposed by one or two parties. That is yourself or somebody else. And our own experience helps us to make this distinction, but Scripture really doesn’t. As far as God’s word is concerned, it’s all from Him. And so we would do well to orient our thinking along those lines as well. And so when we are tempted to buck against discipline or resist it, keep in mind whom you’re resisting ultimately. And as suggested by my title, I’d like to now offer some principles of discipline drawn from the book of Proverbs.

So without further ado, I have four, and it is not, by any means, presumed to be an exhaustive list, but hopefully it is helpful. So first, discipline is an evidence of God’s love. Verse 3, 11 and 12 says, My son do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reprooves him whom he loves, as a father, the son in whom he delights. So the discipline of the Lord is from the Lord. And if you are being disciplined by the Lord, it’s because of his love for you. So children, your parents discipline you because you have their last name, because you belong to them, because they love you.

from the Lord as it helps to produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness. The same is true of God to us. In His kindness, the Lord does not leave us to figure things out on his own, but instead he has a hundred thousand million ways of training us, of disciplining us in His kindness to help shape us. Really, that anyone improves to any degree in any capacity anywhere anytime is owing to God’s common grace. But when it comes to His people, He helps us to get better through constant discipline. Sometimes the discipline takes the form of natural consequences. For example, lost trust is a natural consequence. You can be totally forgiven, but it takes a while to rebuild trust. Or bankruptcy. Sometimes things happen to you. Sometimes it is your own fault. Other times the discipline comes through human means like parents, administering a spanking, or law enforcement, enforcing a night in jail. Either way, it is from God because he doesn’t want us to continue in sin or for sin to become enticing. Proverbs

19 18 says discipline your son for there’s hope. Do not set your heart on putting him to death. Sometimes this is I think in the in the Solomonic section of Proverbs, and he speaks in pretty extreme terms sometimes. This verse addressed to parents, but if you were to consider it from the perspective of the eavesdropping child, he can look and see that it’s proof that God loves him. The fact that that child has a parent who is willing to discipline him is proof that he also has a Heavenly Father who has delegated that responsibility to his earthly father. As long as his son is alive and is subject to the discipline of his earthly father, remains hope for his soul.

And after all, it is the soul with which we are primarily concerned. We’re not concerned here with mere behavior modification or obedient devils. We’re concerned with the formation of character in our children and being the vehicles through which God will discipline them. Parents who can consistently regard themselves as stewards do very well. Chapter 13 verse 24 says, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Again, more extreme language here. You go so far, Solomon does, as to say that if you fail to train your son, you must hate him. It is loving to train, even if the training is not fun or if it hurts.

It should be our aim to raise children that we’ll actually like when they’re fully grown, and who, if we’ve trained them well, and then also for our part to be the sorts of people that our fully trained children will like and turn. So there’s responsibility for us as parents, there’s responsibility in terms of how we administer discipline and also how we make our own decisions and become the sorts of people that we want our kids to like when they grow up. God is not vindictive. He is righteously vengeful by any pleasure that he derives from disciplining those whom he loves comes from the awareness of what we are becoming and what the discipline will produce in us.

It’s not because he particularly enjoys seeing us in pain. Any father who has been pained by having to spank his child has experienced an echo of this, no doubt. And still in God’s love and in his sovereign goodness, he is pleased to discipline us. The right sentiment is captured for us in too small a script in chapter 23, verses 13 to 16. I will read it for you. And it says, do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with a rod, you will save his soul from sheol. My son, if your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad. My inmost being will exalt when your lips speak what is right.

A loving father delights in the wisdom of his son. There’s no father in this room who would not be tickled pink if his son became wise or at least as wise as he is and all of us want our sons to surpass us. A loving father delights in the wisdom of his son, but if he hates his son and leaves him to his own devices, not only will he have raised an enemy in the end, but a jerk to boot. God does not do this with us neither should we do it with others, particularly those that we are given to raise in discipline. Second, discipline makes you wiser. Through the discipline of the Lord, we learn hard lessons and gain wisdom.

Wisdom is the sort of thing that we want other people to have. Those around us have been really nice if they were all wise. It’d be a lot easier for me, right? That’s what everybody thinks. So most of us want to have, but most of us don’t want to get it. And perhaps that is why in his blunt simplicity and wisdom Solomon said, here’s the start, get it. The beginning of wisdom is this, give wisdom.

You can gain wisdom through experience or through observation. Observation would be reading the Bible, would be reading good fiction, studying good history. It could even be keeping your eyes open when you see a toddler having a fit at the supermarket and seeing what happens. Be instructed. And experience is a very effective and a more cruel teacher. And that is, you can gain wisdom by things happening to you directly and learning hard lessons. My preference is the first one. I much prefer learning by observation and being instructed. And Solomon says as much when he says things like observe the ant. Pay attention. Notice. Rather than what happens to the animals needing to happen to you as well. Paul even told the Corinthians in chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, that the experience of Israel and the Exodus took place as examples for us. Man, really? It seems like there’d be more to it than that. And no doubt there was, but that’s a hard providence for those Hebrews. If you’d have told them, guys, what you’re going through right now is

is so that some Gentiles a couple thousand years from now will be instructed. So just hang in there. But that is, it may be a hard Providence for the Hebrews is a grace to the Corinthians and who knows what sort of grace you are being to others or where you can find gracious instruction from the Lord so that you too can gain wisdom. Well, like the Corinthians, our job is to learn from the hard lessons of the experience of others and to gain wisdom accordingly. The alternative, as I said, is to undergo those hard lessons ourselves, which is also very effective but way less fun. This is the discipline we have in view.

And one key to getting wisdom is to get rid of foolishness. Chapter 13, verse 1, a wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to to rebuke. It is wise not only to listen but to accept your father’s discipline and to read the Bible. Human fathers are a stand-in for the Heavenly Father, not a not a substitute, not a replacement, a stand-in. And a way for a son to honor the Lord is by honoring his father. Likewise, it is important when human fathers represent our Heavenly Father that they work to do so well. We want to represent him well. We don’t want to give our children a skewed conception of what their Heavenly Father is like because it’s distorted by us, but no doubt it will be because we cannot do it perfectly. Nevertheless, that is our aim.

Assuming everyone in the equation though is working to be faithful and obedient, the whole process works quite well. Children are repenting, dads are repenting, dads are striving for holiness, they will represent the Lord well if their wives. God uses human fathers sort of prophetically as they speak to the children and they speak to their sons on God’s behalf. So the point then, sons, is this. Hear your father’s instruction. It is good for you. Not because your dad is perfect, but because your Heavenly Father is using him as a vehicle to discipline you and to shape you. Implied in this heating then is obedience, giving heed to what he says. We know this from the second half of the verse, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke. But also we know it from more of Proverbs. Chapter 19 verse 20 says, Listen to advice and accept instruction that you may gain wisdom in the future. Wisdom is the byproduct of listening to advice and accepting instruction and observation and study, but it starts by paying attention. Once again, the beginning wisdom is this.

Get wisdom. When you do those things, it will have the desired effect.

That’s not the same thing as merely accepting consequences. That’s bypassing the listen to advice part. Far too many of us are willing to accept consequences for boneheadedness, but Solomon seems to imply that that kind of pain is actually preventable by paying attention to advice and to instruction. He says in chapter 22 verse 15, folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it from him. Far from him no doubt. According to Solomon here, foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child. It’s not just sitting there on the surface waiting to be knocked off. It’s actually bound in place and it needs to be knocked loose. And the lovingly administered rod of discipline is the perfect tool to make that happen. Chapter 12 verse 1 says, whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid. The sort of knowledge that is mentioned here in Proverbs is close enough, nearly synonymous with wisdom, that I’m lumping them together under this principle.

Knowledge and wisdom, knowledge doesn’t come naturally to most of us, at least not sufficiently. You can, if you are breathing and your eyes are open, you’re going to learn some things. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Rather, knowledge is linked with discipline and it usually comes hard. Solomon is teaching here that the one who loves discipline loves knowledge. Discipline and knowledge are not the same thing, they’re connected. Knowledge comes when we discipline ourselves. The student who elects to do his homework before watching TV shows evidence of the right sort of discipline and love of knowledge because he acts wisely.

So you see the chain there. That behavior is an evidence of what is going on in his mind, in his heart, and his thought processes look like it. When a young man loves discipline, notice he doesn’t have to like it to love it. When he loves discipline, not necessarily likes it, he loves it because he knows it benefits him, helping him to acquire knowledge. On the other hand, if he’s just sitting there gritting his teeth, angry at his dad for daring to discipline him, if he is just hating reproof, Solomon calls that stupid. He who hates reproof is stupid. Do you love discipline?

You don’t have to like it. Do you love discipline? Do you recognize his benefits? Or do you hate waterproof, making you stupid? Proverbs 19, 27 says, cease to hear instruction. The new American standard calls that discipline. Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge. Same thing here. If we blow off the discipline that we receive, we stray from the words of knowledge. Remarkably, you can still hear the words and know what is right and stray from it. So hearing and doing are different things. We let the flesh take over sinfully and willfully, sinning willfully while we are totally aware that we’re going to regret it later on or invite God’s chastisement for it.

We stray from the words of knowledge. Now, lots of us do this. That is when you know better. You know better and you do it anyway. When that happens, you have strayed from the words of knowledge. Chapter 23 verse 12 says, here’s our word instruction, render discipline again in the New York Standard. Apply your heart to instruction and your ear to the words of knowledge. And your ear to words of knowledge. Instead of straying from the words of knowledge, it is far better and may God help us to instead apply our ears to them. That will make us wiser. It also brings honor, which is our third principle. Discipline brings honor.

You know, it’s funny. I was thinking about this when I was preparing, like who wants to listen to a talk on discipline? It’s usually the discipline people. Right? And yeah, I get it. I’m sorry. But it is something that we all need to hear and love because there is honor in it. And honor for honor’s sake is not our aim. We want to honor the Lord. We want to represent Him well and bring Him glory. But there is nothing wrong with pursuing honor in so far as it enables us to better honor Him.

honor befits the honorable and the honorable are disciplined. Chapter 13 verse 18 says poverty and disgrace come to him who ignores instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is honored. I’ve been fortunate to work with a lot of different types of young people in a host of capacities the last 20 years and I mean lots of people in general, but I’m thinking of young people in particular here and the vast majority of those that I’ve have worked with have been the sort who will respectfully listen to reproof, but then do nothing to change their behavior, at least not quickly. Well, that is, I mean, mercifully, sanctification is not a snapshot.

It is a movie, right? But that is ignoring instruction, and it is a recipe for poverty and for disgrace, not for dishonor. Conversely, we respect a person who’s humble enough to actually listen to correction. I don’t know about Solomon’s time, but I suspect it was similar to our own. People don’t like to be corrected. And so they’re inclined to disregard, to not heed, reproof. But if you find someone who earns a rebuke, that is, he’s been wrong, he has sinned, done something foolish and then receives that rebuke graciously and thankfully he tends to stand out. More often the sort of person who earns a reproof is not the kind of one who will pay attention to it.

Turns out we humans are stubborn people and it takes a while to shape the statue of David out of that gargantuan piece of marble. Do you wish to be honored? Well, be honorable. Do you know how? He’d reproof. If you wish to be honored, be honorable. If you wish to be honorable, he’d reproof. Neglecting discipline, whether from yourself or from others, is a good way to ensure poverty and shame. Chapter 5, verses 22 and 23 read, Awaken man’s iniquities will trap him. He will become tangled in the ropes of his own sin. He will die because there is no discipline and be lost because of his great stupidity. This here is then an extreme byproduct of a lack of discipline and a warning of where it leads, gross sin.

A man who is not disciplined will soon find himself in a world of hurt and be completely devoid of honor. We know that it is an evidence of God’s abandoning wrath when he stops disciplining men for their sins. This is what it means for men to be given over to the full consequence of their sin as Paul expresses in Romans chapter one. And may he keep us from that. Discipline brings honor. Last, discipline. Practicing discipline makes you more godly. There you go. Any of you ever seen The Muppets Take Manhattan? Yeah, in the funny movie, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Kermit the Frog finds himself offering advice to the marketing team for ocean breeze soap.

They spent all night there frazzled, strung out on caffeine and sleep deprived. Have you spent many long hours brainstorming a new slogan? They run a couple of them by, uh, Kermit who has amnesia at the time. And he says, I don’t like any of them. Have you tried something like this ocean breeze soap will get you clean. And the little Muppets heads go, turn to him. You mean just say what the product does? No one’s ever tried that. Of course, the results of the simple approach are meteoric sales motion, breeze, soap, and wild success and all of a sudden, even though he doesn’t know his name is Kermit, he’s famous and rich.

Taking a page from Kermit the Frog’s handbook, I’m going to try the same thing here. Practicing discipline will make you more godly. Now, this is something of a catch-all principle simply because there’s so much more to left over to say than is covered by the first three principles. The reality is that there are countless benefits that come to us when we practice wisdom, when we are disciplined. In the Christian, discipline yields teachability, which yields intelligence, which yields godliness, which yields discipline. And so, depending on how many times you’ve gone around the loop, that discipline continues to come from the Lord and shape us until, at least in a certain category, you don’t need to keep being spanked.

And so then you are disciplined yourself. It is a cycle. Chapter 15, verse 32 says, whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence. Ignoring instruction is self-destructive. It is an act of self-hatred practically to ignore instruction. But you will get smarter if you listen to reproof. Now, this presupposes that there’s somebody around to instruct you, but take heart. If you’re listening to this message, there’s a high likelihood that you have someone in your life who will tell you when you’re being foolish, you should listen to them. If nothing else, I’m giving you encouragement now.

And Solomon says nothing about the tone or the delivery of the reproof. At least not in the passages we’ve read. There is an… there is… and I’ll talk about this as we wrap up, but it’s important to be gracious in your delivery. And, you know, common sense and scripture also talk about the importance of being qualified to speak, Galatians 6. But the reality is that the wise man will receive instruction regardless of the source, and the foolish man will reject it regardless of the source. Most people are in between. They’ll gain some instruction and reject the rest, depending on the variables. They may like the delivery, they may like the person, they may fear the deliverer, they may disrespect the deliverer and be cause to disregard him.

But if you will listen to reproof, you will gain intelligence. It’s a fact, people. Like, it doesn’t have to be true correction. It doesn’t even have to be right. And from the process, you will benefit. If you are instructed and the instruction is off base, even there, there’s benefit in the exercise. So you just don’t win if you dismiss it out of hand automatically. You can pray for it, you can perfectly receive it, and you may actually go ahead and graciously, humbly dismiss that reproof. But you probably benefited from having gone through that process along the way anyway. Chapter 25 verse 8, 28, 28 says, A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.

But he who listens to reproof acquires understanding. Man, this is an absolute gem from the book of Proverbs. Solomon still here contrasts the man without self-control with the man who listens to reproof. who listens to a proof is contrasted with a man without self-control. Interesting opposites there. We can safely and logically put the fool in the same category as the man without self-control. Both have no self-control and not only if he has no self-control, not only is a man dishonorable, not only does he hate himself, but he’s also rendered himself very, very vulnerable. People without self-control are subject to a whole host of sins that the self-controlled and disciplined are not.

Teachability, then, is a hedge against vulnerability. Teachability is a hedge against vulnerability. Listen to reproof. It will protect you. chapter 6 verse 23 says, For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life. The godly man is on the path to blessedness. Discipline directs the godly man in the way that he should go. Whether from God, directly or through other means, the reproofs of discipline are the way of life. Chapter 20 verse 13, Love not sleep lest you come to poverty, open your eyes and you will have plenty of bread. Okay, so the beginning of wisdom is get wisdom, but this seems like a pretty low requirement as well.

Like open your eyes and you will have plenty of bread. No, maybe there was, maybe the bedrooms were full of bread back then, but probably not. Mostly start by getting your body out of bed and you’re already on the right track. Like show up, be there, and you will have plenty of bread. Chapter 10, verse 17. The one who follows instruction is on the path to life. This is related to one a couple verses ago. But the one who rejects correction goes astray on the path of life versus going astray, not unlike Tolger’s progress. The man who can follow instructions will be on the path to life. All right, so there are life via a host of other principles on discipline even itself that we can draw from Proverbs.

But this should give us plenty to work on for now. So as we wrap up, I want to offer some takeaways. First, when it comes to yourself, be humble. You’re just not where you’re going to be. Years from now, at the end of your life. And you’re not going to get there without the directional, shaping, corrective, loving discipline of the Lord, which often comes through human means And doing the study, I have also been benefited by meditating on exactly how good and how sweet the discipline of the Lord is. It yields honorability, wisdom, direction in life, prosperity, happiness, and more. And it is totally humbling.

At times it’s downright embarrassing, but we’re on this path together, right? When it comes to yourself, pursue wisdom. The man who actively pursues wisdom will practice discipline along the way. Listen to instruction. People offering correction probably love you. And even if they don’t and they’re just trying to be jerks, God still loves you. And He may have sent them along for a reason that you didn’t anticipate. It is good for you to be a delight to instruct. It’s good for you. And a person who is teachable, a person who listens to instruction, a person who is a delight to instruct, is not. That does not, being like that does not make you weak or gullible.

In fact, Scripture is clear that the reverse is the case. Being a person who listens to instruction does not mean that you’re weak or gullible. Refusing to listen to instruction actually is what makes you vulnerable and stupid. And since most of us don’t want to be vulnerable and stupid, the formula is pretty simple, even if it’s not easy. When it comes to yourself, deny yourself. Deny yourself. Learn to say no and yes at the right times for the right reasons. If you’re like me, you don’t always feel like a disciplined person. When that happens, imagine that you are disciplined and act accordingly. The reality is you probably know what you’re supposed to do.

Soon, you may be wise enough that the spankings are no longer necessary. Last, when it comes to yourself, work hard. Buckle down and act like the person that you want to become. Slay your sin and remain qualified to speak into the lives of others. Stop making excuses, close your mouth, and even invite correction. The exercise is probably good for you, regardless of the counselor. When it comes to others, bear in mind that you have the incredible opportunity to be a vehicle of grace to other people. You have a vehicle to be used, you have the opportunity to be a vehicle to be used by God in his discipline of other people.

So when it comes to others, leave room for grace. We need to cultivate an environment where people are actually working hard to be faithful. Like they’re working hard to be obedient and do what they’re supposed to do. And then they’re giving grace and redirection when they fail. And maybe our children, and maybe someone in our life-to-life group, and maybe somebody else, but as long as they’re not being idiots, foolishly sinning, and then rejecting wise counsel, there’s lots of room for patience and grace if we would but disciple with eyes of faith. When it comes to others, be patient. Maybe you want those around you to be more disciplined, just so you won’t have to listen to their lame excuses.

I don’t blame you. Maybe you need to be more disciplined as God’s vehicle of disciplinary blessing to your children. Well, we know that God blesses faithfulness and he blesses obedience, even when it’s done badly, but developing into the people that we are becoming takes more time than most of us would like. And evidently, God doesn’t mind the process. When it comes to others, be faithful. You never know how your words or your actions are going to be used by God to instruct others while being attentive to your own qualification and readiness to speak. So having done that, go ahead and open your mouth when you need to help somebody else grow.

And so then by God’s great grace, may we be vehicles of grace and discipline to others as he disciplines them, and man, thank God that he loves us enough to discipline us. Let’s pray. Father, as we fight the flesh And we want to be more disciplined people, help us to be humble enough to pursue wisdom and to be faithful where we are. And little things, and may those little things, we get big, the little faithfulness, we get big faithfulness’s all to your glory. We pray that you would help us to be attentive first to ourselves, to being qualified, and to be an optimistic and gracious and patient with others but then being courageous to go ahead and speak.

And may we not be characterized among the foolish, among the vulnerable, among the stupid, but instead be those who love, reproof, even when it is not administered the way we would prefer. That takes humility that most of us don’t have naturally, so we ask you to give that to. And we have enough faith to know that we need more. And so we ask you to increase our faith that you may use us as you see fit. And so thank you for your word and the instruction that it gives and just help us to go ahead and obey it. We ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.